Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe (review)

Mary Lindemann. Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe. New Approaches to European History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xiii + 249 pp. Ill. $49.95.

There is not a lot that needs to be said about this excellent, useful, and relatively short book above the fact that it can be recommended to anyone, student or teacher, studying the early modern period, whether or not they have any specific medical historical interest. The unpretentious, informative title speaks for itself, and exactly the sorts of things that one might expect it to comprehend are set out in the well-written chapters: sickness and health, epidemics, learned medicine, medical education, hospitals, health and society, practice. Curiously, in her list of intentions Lindemann does not alert the reader to the fact that this book is predominantly devoted to orthodox medicine.

Although the focus is Europe (inevitably, because of Lindemann's own background and the available literature), the references are largely to Germany, France, and Britain (mainly England), and to some extent to the Netherlands and Italy. Most countries, however, get an honorary mention at some point. Although, too, the focus is early modern, Lindemann is quite happy to take the reader back to the Middle Ages, and occasionally to antiquity, to make her point. She also leads the reader through the historiography of modern medical history, both initially and in the chapters. Whiggism is explained to the student, although we are left with the old unsquared circle of "knowledge is relative" (p. 6) and a lecture on "the biology and ecology of infectious diseases" (p. 38).

Nothing can totally please everybody, and no doubt scholars will wish to challenge some of Lindemann's interpretations. I would count the move to vitalism in the second half of the eighteenth century a fairly profound shift away from the early modern world, and not the sort of shuffling within a problematic that it seems to be here. I am not sure if there is a big argument in this book. If there is, it is simply that early modern medicine can only be interpreted through early modern culture and society generally. If that is it, the volume demonstrates it beautifully.

Christopher Lawrence
Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at
University College London

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